


anecdotes (miracles)

by theputterer



Series: assorted nonsense timestamps [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Birthday, Childhood, Children of Characters, Depression, F/M, Future Fic, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 21:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17087711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theputterer/pseuds/theputterer
Summary: He lets Ersa pick the flavors.This is probably a mistake; Ersa is three years old, almost four, and has not yet quite grasped how flavor works, how two of her favorite foods might not taste good when paired together. She loves peppermint, and orange, and Cassian is deeply dreading this combination. But luckily, the cake is not for Ersa, and so she thinks instead of what its recipient will find enticing.“Chocolate,” she says. “And vanilla. He likes those.”[Or: three tenth birthdays, and aftermaths.]





	anecdotes (miracles)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Callioope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callioope/gifts).



 He lets Ersa pick the flavors.

This is probably a mistake; Ersa is three years old, almost four, and has not yet quite grasped how flavor works, how two of her favorite foods might not taste good when paired together. She loves peppermint, and orange, and Cassian is deeply dreading this combination. But luckily, the cake is not for Ersa, and so she thinks instead of what its recipient will find enticing.

“Chocolate,” she says. “And vanilla. He likes those.”

Cassian has never been so grateful that Fima’s tastes have always been _very_ vanilla.

“We can do that,” he says.

Jyn has been politely banned from the kitchen; Ersa was not around to remember it, but Cassian has very vivid memories of Fima’s fourth birthday and the _cake_ she’d attempted to bake then.

Sometimes, he swears the kitchen still smells like burned cinnamon.

Instead, Jyn has been dispatched to go to the market to pick up ingredients. Fima was kicked out of the house, though he doesn’t know he’s been _kicked out;_ sent to play with friends at the indoor gymnasium down the street is something he’s happy to do any day of the week, including the day of his tenth birthday. He left the house in a rush, tripping over his untied scarf, catching the hat Cassian tosses at his face, shoving it over his disorderly muddy brown hair. The second the door closed, Ersa skipped to the window, staring out, biting her lip with anticipation.

As soon as Fima was out of eyesight, she spun around. “I’m gonna set the oven!”

Cassian is pretty sure Fima knows what they’re up to. They regularly provide some kind of dessert on a birthday, and cake is a typical option. The only novelty now is Ersa’s involvement. She’s still far too small to do much on her own (she can turn the oven on but is otherwise placed far from it) but she can try her hand at mixing ingredients, and is very enthusiastic about being handed a filled measuring cup and pouring the contents into a bowl.

Jyn arrives in a flurry of snow, has barely stepped through the front door before Ersa is at her side, tugging the bag from her arms.

“Careful, _careful,_ there’s glass--”

“Take your time, Ersa,” Cassian calls, and hears Ersa’s huff in response.

(Ersa, even at three years old, is not accustomed to taking her time.)

Ersa returns to the kitchen, Jyn shadowing her. She offers Cassian a bright smile that makes something in him ache with gratitude, and he would reach out for her if not for the flour staining his hands. She squeezes his shoulder instead.

“What are we making?” she asks, leaning around him.

 _“We_ aren’t making anything,” Cassian says, laughing when she pinches his side in response.

“Chocolate and vanilla cake, Mama,” says Ersa, who is still young and kind.

“Sounds delicious.”

Ersa nods fervently. “I hope so.”

“Am I allowed to wrap presents?” Jyn asks.

“Yes, I think that’s okay,” Cassian says. “Ersa?”

“We’re very busy here,” Ersa confirms.

“I can see that. All right. I’ll be in the front room if you need me. Yell if you set something on fire.”

“Don’t quote me to me,” Cassian says, and Jyn laughs, and Ersa frowns in confusion.

Jyn presses a kiss to his cheek and leaves.

 

* * *

 

Fima politely fakes his surprise at the cake, and Cassian has no doubt that it is for Ersa’s sake.

Fima can be a little rough with her, a little mean and impatient, but Cassian suspects this is mostly done for the benefit of his peers; Jyn has commented on brothers having little sisters as not being as _cool_ as brothers with little brothers, something she’s observed from the social ranks at the orphanage.

It makes Cassian think of Zeferino, and how his older brother doted on him and protected him with a ferocity he’d carry into his years as an Imperial. He wonders how that fierce love might have been shaped around a little sister instead.

When it comes to Zeferino, it is easiest for Cassian to believe Zeferino did not love him as much as he really did.

Ersa insists on cutting the cake, and they all end up with very differently sized slices. Ersa and Fima, unsurprisingly, are given massive pieces. Cassian watches Jyn war with herself, thinking of things like _sugar intake_ and _hyperactivity_ and _lost sleep,_ because she is a good mother; but it is also because she is a good mother that sees her turn the other cheek as her children devour the cake anyway.

The cake tastes off to Cassian. He knows it was made perfectly; he measured everything out, watched Ersa mix it together, monitored the oven while Ersa watched it like a hawk. The reactions of his family (Ersa’s exaggerated _mmms,_ Fima’s gratified smile, Jyn’s chocolate-stained grin) only confirms this. He knows it is him, his head, that is telling him the cake isn’t any good, and there’s no point in eating it.

He eats it, anyway, if only to avoid Ersa’s disappointed face.

He does a lot of things, he thinks, to avoid disappointed faces.

“What did you wish for?” Jyn asks, scraping the last bits of frosting off her plate with her fork. Ten candles, tips burned, are discarded just past her plate.

“Mama!” Ersa cries, indignant. “He can’t tell you, or it won’t come true.”

Fima nods, offering a helpless shrug.

“I’ll tell you what I wished for on my last birthday, if you tell me what you did,” Jyn offers.

Fima and Ersa exchange a glance, weighing this deal.

“I wished we would go to Lah’mu soon,” Fima says, and Jyn blinks, disarmed by this wish.

Cassian thinks of telling Fima they’d been thinking about going on a trip there once school was out, but decides dampening his son’s beliefs in his wishing abilities is not worth the truth.

Ersa looks at Jyn. “What did you wish for, Mama?”

“Oh,” Jyn says, recovering. “I wished for more cake.”

Fima frowns. “So did it--”

Quick as the reflexes she honed on battlefields, where diving for cover meant not losing her head, Jyn snaps her arm across the table, and steals a forkful of Fima’s cake.

“Look at that,” she muses, holding the fork up, smirking at Ersa’s delighted grin and Fima’s rolled eyes, “I got my wish.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Fima tells Ersa, who’s eyeballing his plate speculatively.

Cassian nudges the remainder of his picked over cake to Fima. “Finish off mine for me, would you?”

It is an innocuous, simple gesture from a father to his son on his tenth birthday. Fima takes up the cake with relish, and Cassian watches the chocolate stain his teeth dark brown, all the while wishing he didn’t feel ash on his tongue.

 

* * *

 

“I think it was a good birthday.”

“It was,” Cassian agrees.

He watches the snow falling outside the window, bits of brightness interspersed amidst the black that is the night on Fest. The fire in front of them is still going pretty strong, the soft woodsy smell permeating the room. It’s a smell he treasures, a smell that reminds him of home, and family, and that distant belief that he will never lose any of it.

His eyes flicker up, to the mantel above the fireplace.

The shadows dance over Serafima’s defiant smile.

“I’ve been thinking about her today, too.”

He looks at Jyn. Her glass of wine is half-drunk and half-forgotten in her hand. She’s sitting close to him, her toes pressed to his thigh, purple sweater lopsided against her left shoulder. Her gaze is also turned to Serafima.

“Hard not to,” Cassian murmurs.

He does not comment on how he thinks of Serafima often, how he sees her whenever he looks at his children, and recognizes her eyes staring back at him. He doesn’t describe how he can wake up and _feel_ the melancholia, _her_ melancholia, in his ribs, can be out walking and blink and the world around him is suddenly shapeless and miserable. Jyn knows all of this.

“I like to think she’d get a kick out of Fima sharing her name,” Jyn comments, instead going with the most positive connotation associated with Serafima.

Cassian offers an approximation of a smile. It’s weak.

Jyn touches his face. Her index finger brushes his temple, taps it gently, the silent question, the reminder, _I see you’re sad. The melancholia is here, but you are more than it._

“I’m sorry I’m like this,” he whispers.

“Cass--”

“It doesn’t make sense. I’m so… I’m happy. You’re here, and Fima and Ersa, and Fima is ten, and he laughs so much, and Ersa is cheerful, and this is so much more than I ever knew I could have. I can’t explain why I’m like this. It’s… It’s unbelievable.”

She shakes her head. “Melancholia isn’t something to be _believed._ It’s just something that is. I don’t have to believe you to know you feel it.” She shrugs. “I only have to remind you that you’re here, that you’re home. With me.”

He closes his eyes for a moment.

 _Home,_ he thinks. _You’re home._

And then he stands, and holds out his hand.

“What?” Jyn asks.

(He hears Serafima’s voice in his head: _Cassi, I will teach you how to dance.)_

“Dance with me,” he says.

She blinks, surprised by this, surprise magnified by the quiet of the room. After a moment, she nods, depositing her glass on the table, and getting to her feet. She lets him pull her close, her hand on his back, his on her waist, so familiar and so wanted.

“What brought this on?” she asks.

Cassian leans down, pressing his cheek to her hair.

The room is silent, save for their breathing, the fire crackling behind them, the snow hitting the window.

“What did you do for your tenth birthday?” he asks, an answer and a question all in one.

Jyn is quiet for a moment, swaying with him, and then she speaks.

“I don’t remember it all that well,” she says, slowly. “Saw was there. Yes. My parents, um… It’d only been months since my parents left me. So it was… It was a hard birthday.”

Her voices shakes as she speaks, and Cassian steps closer, regretting he asked.

“I am glad,” she whispers, “That Fima had a much different tenth birthday.”

“Me, too,” Cassian murmurs. “I’m glad he’s happy.”

Jyn nods against his shoulder, before tipping her head up to peer at him. Her green eyes are a little watery, but there is certainty in her face, a certainty Cassian has spent years trying to attain.

“You still with me?” she asks.

It is a very kind, if not to the point, way of checking he is not drowning in his sorrow, in the gray that coats his throat like ash.

He catches her hand, grips it in his, and presses a kiss to her knuckles.

“All the way.”

  

* * *

 

_To Cassian, his mother says, “Cassi, I will teach you how to dance.”_

_She knows that Cassian has been learning how to survive, with Zeferino teaching him how to make food and patch his clothes, and Nerezza teaching him battle skills including shooting and hand-to-hand combat, and whatever else he might be learning with the Rebellion. (Truthfully, she is sure she doesn’t want to know specifics, certain it will only upset her.) But she wants her son to learn things that aren’t necessary for him to know, but things that might make him laugh or smile, like dancing._

_Cassian is ten years old, and he loves his mother, and so he agrees._

_He takes her hand, and she directs him in how to move his feet first, standing next to him and making him follow her steps, something he has spent his entire life trying to do._

_Cassian is so warm, warm with the fire in the room and his family close to him, and learns to dance with his mother._

_“I am proud of you, Cassi,” Serafima says, ducking down a little so Cassian can twirl her._

_Cassian looks up at his mother’s big brown eyes, the eyes he inherited, and sees the clear affection and devotion in them, and suspects she might not be talking only of Cassian’s newly acquired understanding of dancing, but of his other, more time-consuming work._

_“Thanks, Mama,” says Cassian._

_“My brave boy,” says Serafima, kneeling on the floor and touching Cassian’s face. She’s taken off the white shawl she wore outside today, and her curly dark hair is tied up at the back of her head, ringlets falling into her eyes._

_“You are so good, Cassi,” she says._

_“You are too, Mama,” says Cassian, because he doesn’t know how to respond to that._

_“I have tried to be,” she says. “I know I haven’t been around as much as I should be, and I hope you can forgive me for it.”_

_“Of course, Mama,” says Cassian, bewildered as to why Serafima feels like she needs to apologize for working so much to keep Cassian and his siblings sheltered and fed, with Gabriel long dead and Serafima on her own._

_“I have so much hope for your future,” says Serafima. “I cannot wait to see all the things you do. You will be great, Cassi.”_

_“Yes, Mama,” says Cassian, and for the moment, he is also filled with hope, and it grows like a vine in his chest, hope that he will please her, make her proud to call him her son, always._

_“I hope we can celebrate all birthdays, just like this,” says Serafima._

_It’s a good, quiet, well-meaning hope. It is a hope that does not come to be rewarded._

_Cassian’s tenth birthday is the last full day of Serafima’s life._

 

* * *

 

The morning of Ersa’s tenth birthday dawns colder.

Cassian wakes up at his regular time. Jyn is already gone, as she prefers to wake before the children at the orphanage do; but he has no doubt that she stepped in to Ersa’s room to wish her daughter a happy birthday before leaving.

He gets out of bed.

Fima, sixteen years old and in his final year of school, offers his typical morning greeting of a grunt, and moves to dodge Cassian’s hand on his shoulder. Ersa is his opposite, talking so much her bowl of porridge has turned cold without her noticing, a spoonful lost in the air on its way to her mouth. She pauses in her chatter (something to do with a book she’s reading, from the words Cassian could recognize) to beam at him.

“Happy birthday,” he murmurs, leaning down to kiss her head.

Her smile is resplendent, big brown eyes dominating her thin face.

_I am proud of you, Cassi._

He blinks Serafima’s voice away.

“You’d better leave soon,” he says instead.

Ersa gleefully abandons her porridge, darting down the hall to her room for her shoes. Cassian walks to the front room, where Fima is shrugging into his coat. Once again acting as the contrast to his sister, a frown marrs his face.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “Should I call Mama?”

One of Cassian’s favorite things about Fima is how much he reminds him of Jyn. But moments like this give him mixed feelings: he is warmed by how much Fima worries, and deeply ashamed that he has to.

“No,” he says. “No, I’m fine.”

Fima looks less than convinced.

“Don’t tell your sister,” Cassian adds, moments before said sister races back into the room.

Ersa impatiently tugs her long black hair out from under her backpack, wrapping it up in a scarf she ties around her head. Fima picks up his bag, frowning at Cassian as he does.

Cassian clears his throat.

“I’m going to the market today,” he announces, which is a kinder way of saying, _I’m taking the day off work because if I sit still for too long I will think too much about going outside, lying down in the snow, and never getting up._ “I’m taking requests.”

“Are you baking a cake for me?” Ersa asks.

“Of course,” he says, and manages a smile.

“Cream cake,” Ersa says.

“With homemade fire-burned topping.”

Ersa’s grin is toothy. “Good.”

“Good,” Cassian echoes.

He watches them leave, Ersa skipping ahead, Fima trailing behind.

 

* * *

 

The grief still manages to surprise him.

It does not matter how many psychiatrists or counselors tell him this; he finds himself forgetting about how heavy the melancholia is until it smacks him in the head again. It comes and goes as it pleases. He takes time off work when it does, and he knows he is lucky that he has a high enough position in the government that no one asks him about it, about why he skips work only to stay at home for the day.

Or visit Jyn at her work, as he chooses to do on Ersa’s tenth birthday.

He does not always warn Jyn when he’s thinking of visiting her at work, so at first, there is nothing amiss about him waiting in her office, a bag of food from the market at his feet.

“Hey,” she says, smile wide. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to work in the morning and then bake Ersa’s cake in the afternoon.”

He opens his mouth.

And then closes it.

He tries to school his expression to something approximating casualness.

He fails.

Jyn’s smile falls.

“Oh, Cass,” she breathes.

“Fima had that exact same look,” Cassian comments.

“How bad is it? Should I take you to Duval’s?”

Going to his psychiatrist is not a bad idea, but Cassian is familiar enough with himself, with his moods and sadness, that he knows what he really needs. “No, that’s not necessary. But I… I wanted to see if you were interested in learning how to bake.”

It is the first time he has truly surprised her in a while, he thinks.

“You don’t have to do that,” Jyn says. “I’ll come home with you, and stay, but you don’t need to force yourself to participate--”

“I should be the one saying that. I should remind you that I only wish for you to stay close, Jyn.” He pauses, and adds, “Fima’s at school, and he can’t help me with Ersa’s cake. So I wanted to see if you wanted to.”

Cassian doesn’t _need_ anyone’s help in baking or cooking. But for him, needing _help_ with baking and cooking has never been why he’s asked others to join him.

It was to hear Zeferino read Festian recipes to him. It was to watch Nerezza try a new kind of soup. It was to kiss Taraja’s jam-splattered mouth. It was to catch the smile of an orphan as they cut up vegetables. It was to hold Ersa’s hands as she rolled out dough. It was to lift Fima to reach the top cupboard.

It was always to have everyone he loved close.

Some of this must translate in his face, for Jyn nods.

“I’d love to.”

 

* * *

 

“I knew you’d like this part.”

“You gave me so much _shit_ for burning that cake that _one time--”_

“One and only time, we didn’t dare attempt it again--”

“And as it turns out there’s a whole kriffing _cake_ designed around _burning it--”_

“The trick is to not burn it too much.”

Jyn huffs, tossing her slightly sweaty bangs out of her eyes. She’s kneeling on the floor by the fireplace, stirring a pot of cream before her, watching as the cream turns brown at the edges, curling up at parts, blackening at others. There is a hint of wonder in her face, turning her almost childlike, and he laughs again.

“Who taught you how to make this? Zeferino?”

“Mm. My mother, actually.”

Jyn looks at him.

“She took the day off both her jobs,” Cassian murmurs. “To bake the cake, and get the house ready for us to celebrate. It was a big deal, her taking the time to do all of that, instead of working. They wanted to make a big deal of it; her, and Ezza, and Zeferino. They knew…”

He loses his voice.

The Andors were brittle and fracturing. Cassian, the ten year old, the baby of the family, was the only one impervious to the cracks. As an adult, he’s all too familiar with the kind of horror that comes when facing down the inevitability of a family collapsing. The powerlessness to stop it.

(He can hear Jyn’s voice, from long ago and far away: _What happens to you, at the end of the war?)_

But he and Jyn; they saw the end, and they survived it. They found their way back together.

The Andors never got a chance.

They died broken.

This will not be the fate of this next batch of Andors.

“The cake is Festian cream cake,” Cassian continues. “You can get it at any bakery here. But burning the cream like this… It was something I only ever saw her do. That’s a Sernpidal tradition.”

Fest is not fiery, despite the existence of an Andor with a name meaning fiery; because that Andor was named after a Cassiano from Sernpidal, a planet that does not shy away from the sun, the most fire-like star of all. Fest relies on fire to survive, but fire is not of the ice planet. Fire is the kind of thing liable to burn a Festian alive. It is also the kind of thing that forces a Festian to survive.

Jyn, who is all light, who is all wildfire; she’d burned him alive a long time ago. The Cassian that emerged from those ashes then is a better one.

“I feel like this kind of topping would catch on here,” Jyn says, stirring the pot before her.

The ash gathering around the bottom of the pot blows softly into the fire.

It clings to it.

“Don’t let it get too dark,” Cassian cautions, watching the cream burn. “It’s got to be mostly light if it’s going to be any good.”

 

* * *

 

If Ersa and Fima are surprised to find both their parents waiting for them at home, they don’t show it.

Ersa is hyperactive, causing Cassian to reconsider giving her any cake at all. He manages to get her to still long enough for her to take off her coat, while he brushes snowflakes out of her hair. Over Ersa’s head, he watches Fima go to Jyn’s side. They look at each other, similar brown hair curling at the edges of their eyes, and seem to come to a silent understanding. Fima’s eyes sliding towards Cassian tell him what the topic of that understanding was.

Fima retreats to his room, and Ersa faces her parents.

“Did you make my cake?” she asks.

“Your mother did,” Cassian replies.

_“Really?”_

Jyn preens under Ersa’s delight. “Sort of. I helped.”

“You _helped?”_

“I wanted to try,” Jyn says, stepping forward and pulling Ersa into her arms. She clutches Ersa to her, and Cassian wonders what she is thinking, if she is thinking of the sorrow that has mangled Cassian, if she is thinking of how Ersa carries the gray he does, if she is thinking of the days in the future where Ersa won’t be able to get out of bed.

Cassian, meanwhile, cannot help but look at the ten-year-old child and think of a different ten-year-old child, one who lost their mother the day after their tenth birthday.

The terror of Ersa inheriting this fate grips him.

Jyn kisses Ersa’s head.

“My best girl,” she whispers, and the words are a promise.

 

* * *

 

The fire-burned topping is a hit. It always is, but somehow the knowledge that it was Jyn who made it makes it that much more delicious.

The topping that did not make it onto the cake is deposited in a bowl on the table, and over the night, the four of them scoop out handfuls. It starts with spoons, but devolves into hands. Ersa’s hot chocolate becomes more solid than liquid, and Fima lets Ersa paint a cream moustache on his face. Jyn smiles at them, her cheeks rosy with laughter, and the gray in Cassian feels smothered by the warmth of them all.

While Fima does the dishes and Jyn puts their leftovers away, Cassian takes Ersa’s hand.

“Let me teach you how to dance,” he says, and Ersa nods her enthusiasm.

Ersa is much shorter than him, but he was much shorter than Serafima when she taught him to dance, and so this is no impediment. Ersa watches as he steps, carefully mirroring him, and his heart aches at how hard she is trying, how she throws herself so fully into everything she does.

Serafima is always at the corner of his eye, but he feels very close to her tonight, celebrating the tenth birthday of his youngest child, the one who is most like him.

“I’m so proud of you,” he whispers.

Ersa looks up at him, frowning a little. “Thanks.”

“I can’t wait to see what you do,” he says. “With your brilliance, your kindness--”

“Papa,” Ersa says, half-laughing, still very much confused, because she is ten years old and doesn’t know what to make of Cassian’s desperation.

“Just… Remember that, okay? Remember how wonderful you are, how--”

“You love me,” Ersa finishes.

He smiles. “Exactly.”

From the kitchen, they hear Fima yelp, and they look over to see Fima shaking cream out of his hair, Jyn laughing so hard she’s got one hand on the counter for balance, while the other holds the open container of leftover burned cream. Her laughter devolves into a shriek as Fima dives for the container, wresting it from her grip, and uses his taller height to dump a handful of cream over her head.

In a heartbeat, Ersa is out of Cassian’s arms, racing to the kitchen to grab her own handful of cream, to throw it at her brother’s face.

“Fima, no, it’s my _birthday--”_

But she laughs, eyes closing as the cream thrown back at her settles into her eyebrows.

Jyn emerges, dark hair clumped with cream in patches. She is glowing from head-to-toe. He has never seen anything as bright in his life.

It feels like another universe, or a past life, where he walked to her across a hanger, and the feeling he’d almost forgotten raced through his blood, this thrumming, fleeting, thing called hope.

It is this very same distant thing he feels now; it is never so distant when Jyn carries it to him.

For a moment, he thinks he can breathe without the impossible gray in his lungs, without the abyss echoing in his mind. For a moment, he watches her, and thinks if he only follows her, he can traverse the melancholia he cannot explain.

(If he follows her out onto the ship, into the tower, up the tower, into the elevator, onto the beach, to the ocean that will never end for them.)

He takes her hand.

(He hears his voice in his head: _They were never going to believe you.)_

With her other hand, she reaches up, and taps his temple.

(Her voice echoes his: _I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad.)_

He squeezes her hand, this lifeline.

He can hear their children laughing in the kitchen.

He can smell the fire roaring behind her.

He can see the familiar snow pelting the window.

_(Welcome home, welcome home, welcome home.)_

She asked him a question, once. He’s spent thirty years answering it. The answer has never changed, but the meaning has.

He has seen it in her eyes, so many times. In the eyes of his children, the reflection of his dead mother. It’s an answer that denies conditions. It is an answer that can, sometimes, simply be. Like melancholia; it is what it is and what it says. It is not about belief, but about what it manifests as when it comes from the speaker.

It is seemingly innocuous, but violent in its reality.

(And isn’t that just the story, the whole story.)

He looks at her, and he thinks of asking it, by saying the words aloud. He forgets saying the words aloud is not something he needs to do anymore, to be understood.

Jyn lifts his hand, and presses a kiss to the back of it.

“All the way,” she whispers.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Story title from "Opera Singer", by Ross Gay:  
> and because we all know the tongue's clumsy thudding  
> makes of miracles anecdotes let me stop here  
> and tell you I said thank you.
> 
> Italicized middle passage of Cassian's tenth birthday taken verbatim from GRAY AREAS, Ch 9: The Last Day, to provide some context. Fima and Ersa are OCs, as are Serafima, Nerezza, and Zeferino.
> 
> this story unearthed by a prompt from Callioope on tumblr: "I just read that scene in gray areas where Cassian has that great bday right before everything goes to shit. Have you written anything about how he feels when Fima or Ersa hit that birthday age?" it's a really great prompt, very Me (memory, family, angst) and this was the result. almost certainly not the desired outcome.
> 
> but I was thinking about depression, having experienced what we might politely call a relapse, a very big downward swing. I was thinking a lot about drowning myself, but had enough Rationality left to take myself to the ER to get stabilized. and so, with a Nonsense prompt, I wanted to explore how Cassian would be living with the relapses that go with a chronic illness. despite his best efforts, despite him being healthy and otherwise happy.
> 
> chronic depression can also be triggered by memories or traumas, and Cassian's tenth birthday immediately preceding the death of his mother was certainly a trauma. it is no surprise Fima and Ersa hitting that milestone ends up knocking him back a bit. this is very in keeping with how the Sernpidalian Melancholia works: it gets set off, and never truly goes away after.
> 
> it was my birthday last week, and I asked for prompts, and I have another I am trying to work out. it would be from the PARALLAX AU-verse. I don't start something unless I have an opening and/or know what I am trying to say with the story, so no real progress on that thing so far. But I'm trying. I think that is the kindest thing we can offer. <3
> 
> so, please feel free to drop a line. I am here and also on [tumblr](http://www.theputterer.tumblr.com) where I guess I do take prompts sometimes, considering we have this thing and UNCURLING LIFELINES and SOMETHING YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A NAME FOR.
> 
> [tumblr user leaiorganas has also made moodboards for GRAY AREAS, AMOR FATI/UNCURLING LIFELINES, and EVEN AS A SHADOW, EVEN AS A DREAM, which you can find there, tagged as "nonsense moodboards." they are very cool and I am so lucky.]


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